Slater claims fourth Italian F4 win in a row with Imola race one victory

Photo: ACI Sport

Prema’s Freddie Slater claimed his fourth Italian Formula 4 victory in a row by winning race one at Imola.

Slater was beaten to pole by Van Amersfoort Racing’s Hiyu Yamakoshi, who fended off the points leader into the first braking zone.

There was drama behind as Jenzer Motorsport’s Reno Francot went across the gravel in the second part of the Tamburello chicane and bounced back onto the track. Prema’s Kean Nakamura Berta went into the gravel exiting the chicane to avoid contact with Francot, but that led to him striking the barriers at speed and his car spinning several times.

Jenzer’s Matus Ryba and R-ace GP’s Enzo Yeh were eliminated in a seperate incident, and BVM Racing’s Jan Koller also retired after stalling at the start. Later in the lap there was a collision between PHM Racing’s Kamal Mrad and Jenzer’s Ethan Ischer, sending both of them into the gravel, and so the safety car was summoned to retrieve all the crashed cars.

Francot did complete the opening lap in 25th place, having started sixth, but was forced to retire on the next one.

Racing resumed on lap four and Slater passed Yamakoshi before the pair even reached Tamburello. His Prema team-mate Alex Powell picked up damage while fighting a few places behind, and he retired in the pits at the end of the lap.

Slater went into lap five with a gap of 0.861 seconds to Yamakoshi, but they were soon bunched up again as PHM’s Everett Stack jumped over the Tamburello kerbs on lap five and forced Cram Motorsport’s Francisco Macedo off. The incident ended Stack’s race, and the safety car returned.

The next restart was on lap seven and Slater nailed it to immediately gap himself from Yamakoshi, who then had US Racing’s Akshay Bohra trying to pass him. Yamakoshi left little room and Bohra went onto the grass on the pit straight, meaning he then had to switch to focus to keeping Prema’s Dion Gowda behind.

This time Slater had a 0.748s gap within a lap, and although Yamakoshi set fastest lap after fastest lap in the second half of the race the gap remained at around 0.7s until the final lap when it was reduced to 0.359s. Despite retiring, Powell remains Slater’s closest title rival but has almost half as many points.

Bohra eventually pulled away from Gowda, and behind him all race were US’s Jack Beeton and Prema’s Tomass Stolcermanis.

VAR’s Gustav Jonsson held seventh until he got sideways at the final corner on lap nine, leading to him being passed by US’s Maxim Rehm, and the final points scorers were Prema’s Rashid Al Dhaheri and US’s Gianmarco Pradel. His team-mate Matheus Ferreira finished 12th from 17th on the grid.

Race results (16 laps)